३१ मार्च, २०१८

"After years of using tape to give herself double eyelids — considered a mark of beauty alongside traits like porcelain skin and a tapered chin..."

"Wang was even more unsatisfied with her appearance and opted to undergo double eyelid surgery while in college. She remembers feeling like a doll being stitched together and was immediately inspired to create art involving needles.As for her decision to focus on the chest: 'During that surgery, the doctor said to me, Your breasts are quite flat; would you like to consider breast surgery? So I chose breasts as the subject [of my art],' Wang recalls.... Wang intends her works to query rather than overtly criticize. 'I am more posing a question, dissecting an issue into pieces that I can understand, and then seeing whether others have the same feelings,' she says. The felted breasts, for instance, allude to the violence behind mass-produced beauty in a modern Chinese society that narrowly defines attractiveness and pressures women to achieve these ideals at any cost.... [The recorded] sound of needle felting [gives] the audience a sense of hidden violence and discomfort in an implicit way... When I played the felting sound for American audiences, they thought it sounded like a man masturbating or making love. Something that looks cute, fluffy, and pink can also be tied to violence, sex, and the inferior status of women."

From "Pink Bits: Feminist Pop Artist Peels Back Skin, Shame, Stigma/Wang Weijue’s felted wool breasts and other works evoke longstanding beauty standards and current events" (in Sixth Tone ("Fresh Voices from Today's China")).

१८ टिप्पण्या:

Temujin म्हणाले...

I felted bored. But I will continue to say, that is one fucked up generation.

Molly म्हणाले...

So this feminist icon artist self-mutilated to make herself conform to the (masculine) ideal of feminine beauty. This is not your father's feminism.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

I clicked on the link to see what double eyelids look like. I didn't find out, but my eyes randomly caught this line: "When women make things like this, they commit violence just like men.”

Creation is the domain of violent males? Or men are violent and she wants to be violent too? Or is it just a tossed off notion she thought sounded neat?

Balfegor म्हणाले...

Wouldn't know those felted breasts were supposed to be breasts if it didn't say so . . . they look like dumplings.

Re: Chinese beauty standards, the traditional exemplars are the Four Beauties. The linked Wikipedia article on the Four Beauties doesn't make quite clear, but Yang Guifei (consort of the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, killed due to a bodyguard revolt during the An Lushan rebellion) was supposed to have been quite voluptuous. Later Chinese pop culture features both slender and voluptuous images of beauty, e.g. in the famous Qing era novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, where Lin Daiyu is slender, neurotic, and moody, and Xue Baochai is full figured and easy to get on with.

Whatever you say म्हणाले...

I have friends who recently adopted a Chinese toddler. This baby was placed for adoption because she did not look like the Chinese like their daughters to look, according to the agency.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Worthwhile and original art can be made from the anxiety, pain, insecurity, frustration, anger, perplexities, resentments, disappointments, vanities, etc., of ordinary human existence, but apparently no feminists anywhere have quite got the hang of it yet.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Balfegor: ...the famous Qing era novel, Dream of the Red Chamber...:

I'm such a rube that for the longest time (in fact, until we inherited my father-in-law's library which included a copy, and I read it), I assumed that this famous Qing era work was some classic porn novel. (But hey, c'mon, tell me that title doesn't suggest "high-toned smut" to an anglophone.)

tcrosse म्हणाले...

Those felted breasts look a lot like an Italian pastry
Capezzoli di Venere (Nipples of Venus)

Balfegor म्हणाले...

Re: Angle-Dyne:

The famous pornographic novels from that era are the Golden Lotus and, uh, The Carnal Prayer Mat.

One of the alternate titles for the Dream of the Red Chamber is Twelve Beauties of Jinling which probably sounds even smuttier. But it's usually called 紅樓夢: Red-Building-Dream.

Birches म्हणाले...

Speaking of plastic surgery, I saw an acquaintance last night whom I hadn't seen in a few years. Her fake breasts (which she's had since I have known her) are very well done. But she had some face work done. It's awful. Bad plastic surgery is so embarrassing. I could barely look at her.

Phil 314 म्हणाले...

I'm confused . It is ok to criticize culture and tradition?

Is this a Chinese woman coming to America to criticize her native homeland and culture because it's safer here?

Its almost as if foreigners come to America because they want freedom of thought, freedom of expression.

Do we have that here?

Balfegor म्हणाले...

Re: Phil 3:14:

Mostly foreigners come to America to make money. Anything else is just a bonus. But Koreans coming to the US do like the more relaxed, less competitive pace of life, and the fact that you don't have to worry about what other people think about you, or what they're going to tell your second cousin that's going to get back to your in-laws or parents or whatever.

Some people go abroad to criticise, sure, but that's not unique to the US. Kim Wan-Seop went to Australia and Japan to speak out against the sacred cows of modern South Korea. And, uh, then he went back and they took his passport away so he couldn't do it anymore.

So yeah -- it's mostly just that if you're going to criticise the Fatherland, you better be outside the Fatherland when you do it. And the US is one of many places you can do that because people mostly don't care if you criticise someone else.

buwaya म्हणाले...

Too many words, too little art.

Jaq म्हणाले...

When I see fake breasts, my first thought is that they age a woman. It is not something young women need to do.

Jaq म्हणाले...

Plus form over function, something of a no no in my esthetic.

Josephbleau म्हणाले...

As the great Zappa told us, “Anything over a mouthful is wasted.”

daskol म्हणाले...

It appears we are so subsumed in a politicized culture thst we no longer recognize aesthetic exploration. All we see are the political implications. Sad!

She's fascinating: perceptive, of herself and her world, and she makes strange, beautiful things. I expect great things from her.

Bad Lieutenant म्हणाले...


Josephbleau said...
As the great Zappa told us, “Anything over a mouthful is wasted.”

3/31/18, 8:49 PM


Or, to put it another way, luxury.